SANTA CLARA, CA – APRIL 7, 1999 – In an effort to break through the largest barrier facing the PC graphics industry, NVIDIA announced that it will be the first company to deliver integrated transform and lighting (T & L) processing in a single-chip solution to the mainstream 3D graphics market. This capability, combined with the latest standard APIs will deliver a quantum leap in performance to the PC graphics market for 1999.

Transform and lighting are two of the major steps in the 3D graphics pipeline. Due to their mathematically intensive and highly repetitive nature they are ideally suited to dedicate, application-specific hardware like NVIDIA's graphics processors.

"The developers and end-users have spoken, they're tired of poor-quality artificial intelligence, blocky characters, limited environments and other unnatural looking scenes," said David Kirk, chief technologist at NVIDIA. "This new graphics capability is the first step towards an interactive Toy Story or Jurassic Park."

NVIDIA is the first 3D graphics processor company to embrace integrated transform and lighting, for the mainstream market. In the past, dedicated transform and lighting hardware subsystems have only been available in extremely expensive image generators and engineering workstations. Today's deep-sub-micron semiconductor process technology provides the transistor densities necessary to build these capabilities into a single device that is far less costly and runs significantly faster.

"Shiny has invested years into extremely advanced tessellation, deformation and real time volumetric lighting," said David Perry, President and CEO at Shiny Entertainment. "Adding NVIDIA's transform and lighting technology breathes fresh life into our characters, increases their geometric fidelity and yields fun new gameplay ideas."

By moving T&L calculations from the CPU to the graphics processor, there are more cycles available for modeling physics, artificial intelligence, character behavior and game play; areas that are severely lacking in modern applications. The benefit is two-fold, a world that both looks and behaves realistically.

"Sophisticated artificial intelligence will be one of the key's to interactive gaming in our industry," said Peter Molyneux, CEO at Lionhead Studios. "Working with NVIDIA's new technology, we've been able to advance the graphical and behavioral features in 3D applications beyond what was ever expected and deliver the most realistic gaming experience with our upcoming game Black and White."

NVIDIA ProcessorsThe RIVA family of 3D/2D processors, the RIVA TNT2(TM), RIVA TNT(TM), RIVA 128ZX(TM) and the RIVA 128(TM) is the first family of high performance processors for the performance mainstream PC market. The RIVA processors utilize a 128-bit pipeline to support the computational throughput required for current and future graphically intense applications.

The NVIDIA Vanta(TM) 3D/2D processor is the first in a family of 3D processors designed for the enterprise PC market. Based on the RIVA TNT2 architecture, the NVIDIA Vanta processor is designed for Microsoft(R) Windows(R) 2000 and the burgeoning market for enterprise visualization applications. By leveraging their graphics technology and massive gate counts, all NVIDIA processors are able to deliver stunningly realistic, high frame rate 3D, along with benchmark winning 2D, VGA and video acceleration in single chip solutions.

Except for the historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ materially. Factors that may affect NVIDIA's actual results include the impact of competitive products and pricing, technological changes in products and components, the ability to timely and successfully develop and produce in volume new products and modifications to existing products, market acceptance of new products and modifications to existing products and conditions in the PC market. Further information on factors that could affect the financial results of NVIDIA is included in the Registration Statement on Form S-1, dated January 22, 1999, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Notes to Editors: Please note that the recommended way of writing NVIDIA, RIVA 128, RIVA 128ZX, RIVA TNT and RIVA TNT2 is all CAPITALS.

NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, RIVA TNT, RIVA TNT2 and NVIDIA Vanta are trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation. RIVA, RIVA 128 and RIVA 128ZX are trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation and STMicroelectronics. Other company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.